No criminal scum to be seen.
- Introduction/Read this first
- Patches, Utilities, and Tools
- Texture Overhauls and Replacers
- Atmospheric/Weather/Immersion mods
- Audio, Quests and Content
- Mechanics, Leveling, and NPC Changes
- FCOM/Optimization/Interface and Conclusion
Last updated 2009-07-09
Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion happens to be one of – if not my favorite game of the past five or six years. No matter how many newer games come out, I always somehow find myself installing or replaying through Oblivion ever couple of months, for one reason or another. The game world is so massive that I really haven’t explored the entire thing in the three or four years it has been out.
Even better, Oblivion, like Morrowind before it, allows for a massive amount of customization and user generated content. Everything from new dungeons and weapons to a complete recreation of previous game landmasses, and even a complete Middle Earth overhaul is possible. Chances are, if there is something you want changed or added to Oblivion, its out there.
This page contains all the mods and tweaks I use in my Oblivion game. I personally try to avoid anything that adds content or locations to the game, and focus on adding stuff that increases the overall immersion and experience of the game – visual changes and additions, more NPCs, stuff like that. Even though there are some pretty decent quest mods out there, I avoid them, as they usually don’t have very good voice acting, or no voice acting at all, and kill “my immersion”.
Even though Oblivion was released for both the 360 and PS3 as well as the PC version, mods can only be applied to the PC version of the game. So if you don’t own the PC version, you’re out of luck. It is now dirt cheap, however, and the $20 Game of the Year edition includes both the Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine expansion packs, as well as the additional downloadable content (extra player owned homes, horse armor, weapons, etc.) You might be saying “But why do I have to mod a game to enjoy it?” You don’t. But modding adds to the longevity of the game, big time. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, was released almost ten years ago and still has large replay value due to it’s very active modding community.
You can also grab Oblivion on Steam now, for the convenience of running the game with the Steam Overlay and showing how much time you’ve wasted in it. At first, mods that used Oblivion Script Extender didn’t work correctly with Steam, but Valve was nice enough to contribute code to the Oblivion Script Extender project, going so far as even making the game launch OBSE if it is present instead of the regular Oblivion executable. It’s more expensive than the boxed version, so keep that in mind.
This page will assume you’re using the Game of the Year edition, or at least the equivalents of the content offered in it – the Game of the Year edition is really just a combination of all the content released by Bethesda to date. Note that this is just a collection of mods and utilities I like, not instructions on how to use or add them – when I get the time, I’ll write up an install guide on the whole f’ing thing. The order of the mods listed here is generally the order I install them in, with the exception of the FCOM overhaul (more on that later.)
As a rule of thumb, properly installed mods usually won’t crash your game. Improperly installed mods or mods that conflict with each other without being Bash Patched (see Wrye Bash) will usually cause crashes as well. You should be aware that running a large amount of mods (usually around 15 or so) will impact the performance of your game negatively. I’ll do my best to list under each mod it’s approximate FPS impact. I also follow a personal rule of “keeping it relatively simple, motherfucker” (KIRSMF), as the more shit you end up adding to your game, the more likely shit is to break. Even though I’m listing a lot of shit here, I don’t use all of the mods. Just some. Or most. Well, alright, I use a ton of them.
When adding mods, I usually install one at a time and test them one at a time. I start a new game, open the console with the tilde key, and type “coc.imperialbridgeinntavern”, which teleports you to an area outside the starting zone. Then I run around for ten to fifteen minutes, or check whatever the mod I added changed, and then move on and install another mod.
And yes, all the screenshots on this page are from my own game. It looks that good.
